


red star

by zealotarchaeologist



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Dream Logic, Gen, Spoilers, amelie being a little more or less than human makes her more fun, idk i love this game i just wish the female characters got to interact at all ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22821613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealotarchaeologist/pseuds/zealotarchaeologist
Summary: Before the end of the world, as the Beaches merge into one, Fragile dreams.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	red star

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't a ship it's not even a thing, it's not anything. but there's. definitely an energy.

Fragile doesn’t remember jumping. But when she opens her eyes, she’s moved all the same. Finds herself standing on the grey sand and stones of an unpleasantly familiar shore.

No, she didn’t jump, would remember if she had. The last thing she remembers is dozing off in some corner of Capital Knot. The jumps back East had done a number on her. Case in point, she feels like shit, far worse than the usual. At least she’s clothed, though her gloves are gone.

The Beach she’s on isn’t hers. The sun is setting on the horizon, the red-orange glow broken by jagged shapes emerging from the water. Rocks, ice, even what looks like the corpse of a whale. At first she thinks the ocean here is just choked with seaweed, but when she looks closer the tangling black shapes are more like ropes. The cords form a web across the shoreline, reaching out into the sea.

And there’s a familiar woman in red sitting on the shore, staring out into the sunlit water.

Amelie turns to face her. There’s no surprise at all in her face, only something a little like disappointment.

“You’re dreaming.” She says, by way of explanation. “Your body won’t wake up.” The way she speaks, it’s unclear if that’s a threat, a reassurance, or a simple fact.

Fragile doesn’t respond. A chill is settling in her, the same sort of feeling she gets in her bones before the rain sometimes. A need to move, jump, escape now. She can’t let herself get distracted. What Higgs had said during their last conversation is fresh in her mind. _Oh, sure, blame it all on me. I’m just the gun, darling. Don’t you wanna know who pulls the trigger?_

“Do you have nightmares, often? I’m afraid that’s my fault.” The setting sun lights the edges of her face with red. “Those visions of the future in ruins, they’re mine.”

She’s not sure what she should ask. Why? How? What’s the purpose of telling her this?

“The nightmares never bothered me much.” Fragile says, instead. “They’re only dreams.”

Amelie gives her a sad smile. “Not so fragile, are you.” With a sigh, she stands, brushing the sand off her legs. The red of her dress is a color so bright it almost hurts to look at. It makes her vision swim, like staring at the sun for too long.

“What,” says Amelie, “Are your intentions with my brother?”

She could almost laugh. Was it really about something so simple? She had expected—evil plans or threats or something, not this. “I care for him.” Fragile answers easily, honestly. It’s not a secret. “He cares for me too, though not in the same way. You don’t have to worry about that.” If she _had_ been worried about that. It would explain a few things.

Amelie tilts her head, a little like a seabird. “Does that bother you?”

“Not really.” It’s unfortunate, sure, but hardly the most unfortunate thing that’s happened to her.

For a moment it seems like that’s it for her interrogation. Amelie looks at her like her answers are numbers of some kind, a value that she can slot away somewhere in her understanding of all the millions and millions of human beings still left alive.

Fragile never likes that look. Can’t stand being seen like that, being evaluated. Knows what people see when they look at her.

“How long has it been since someone touched you?” Amelie says, and her voice is so horribly gentle. She’s never heard any harshness to that voice, nothing real in it beyond the soothing tone one would use with a child.

“A year, give or take. Since.” Since the act that Amelie had some part in, regardless of how small. It may not have been her idea, but it would not have happened without her. Fragile won’t forget that.

The slight smile again. Is that the only face she can make? “Longer than that, for me. Time passes so slowly here. You know, you walk on the Beach often enough.”

The small talk grates on her, makes her skin crawl. What’s the point of all this? If Amelie—if the EE wanted her dead, a threat eliminated, surely she could have done that by now. And yet. She’s just standing there looking placid. As if they’re having a perfectly normal conversation, watching a pleasant sunset on a normal beach.

“Are you lonely, Amelie?” She asks, incredulous. It never occurred to her, that perfection could be lonely. And this woman is perfect, really, that wasn’t just her temper talking. Her skin looks so smooth there’s something unreal about it. So pale and soft, never once touched by sun or rain or violence. Maybe there is something lonely in that, after all.

The question has the effect of a bullet finding vulnerable flesh. Amelie certainly looks like she’s been shot, makes that face of utter, existential surprise. She hadn’t meant it unkindly, but there’s something gratifying about seeing the first sign of real emotion.

But just as quickly, her perfect, uncanny face returns. And she walks towards Fragile.

She knows, in an abstract way at least, what Amelie is. They’ve all spent the last day talking about _Extinction Entities_ in increasingly frightened tones, though no one knew quite how to define the term. Higgs was less scientific about it: a goddess, he said. Death herself. Masquerading in the shape of a woman.

The way she approaches Fragile now, she doesn’t look like a woman at all. Nothing like the pictures, the holograms that everyone’s caught a glimpse of, even outside the UCA. (Her father liked them well enough, but only from a distance. Didn’t trust them to handle themselves, she remembers, trusted them even less to control the country.) She’s tall, would be taller than Fragile even without her heels. The shadow she casts on the Beach is far taller, though, as if she’s struggling to fit into her body. She can understand the feeling, in her own way.

And now all that presence is focused on her. Appraising her. The fact that she’s been allowed to keep her clothes here means nothing with the way that stare goes through her. Only once before has she been so terribly aware that her body is meat.

Still, she holds her ground. Holds her head there, unbowed.

She doesn’t even flinch when Amelie takes her hand to examine. Her grip isn’t particularly firm. Rather her hands have their own kind of gravity, something strange and magnetic that keeps Fragile from pulling away. Amelie turns her hand over, stares into the wrinkled skin like she’s trying to read her palm. Short life. Unlucky in love.

“I don’t age.” She says. It’s the wrong thing to say. The carelessness in her voice eviscerates whatever sympathy Fragile might have held. “At least not in the lifespan of a human. I have looked the same for my entire life.”

“I don’t recommend it.” If Amelie is at all bothered by her cold, biting tone, she doesn’t show it. “Hurts quite a bit. Your body starts to ache, all the time, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Their fingers intertwine briefly. Amelie smiles, and it’s empty. “I’ve never had that. Never hurt. Never ached.”

Fragile waits for her opening. When Amelie lets her hand fall she turns, quick, and catches her by the wrist. She digs her nails into that perfect skin, hard. “Try it.”

For a moment, it is allowed to happen. Amelie makes no attempt to resist, just stares at her own hand, curiously, as red marks start to bloom on her skin.

Then Fragile is on her knees in the sand, gasping for air. She can’t recall getting there—Amelie didn’t push her there, she would remember that. She’s just there suddenly, the breath knocked out of her.

“You’re bold.” Amelie says. Still standing there. Looking at her. “But your body is fragile. Your ego even more so.”

“You’re one to talk. I barely hurt you.” The little crescent marks are bright red in Amelie’s pale skin. The flush on her face looks real now, not that ever-present makeup giving her the illusion of humanity. It’s surprising. It’s satisfying. “How does it feel?”

“What?”

“Being hurt.”

Amelie doesn’t answer that. She’s quiet for a moment, then bends down to where Fragile is on her knees, still catching her breath. “You would be interesting company.” Her perfect hand slides under Fragile’s jaw, tilting her head up. “For a few years or so. But that’s nothing to me, do you understand? This moment is less than an instant.”

“And yet, I left a mark.” She wonders if anyone’s managed it before. Wonders if Higgs ever thought to try.

“Is that what this is about?” With a sad smile again, Amelie pulls the very thought from her. “Do you think you’re reconquering territory?”

What a way for miss America to put it. Fragile doesn’t dignify that with any response, just a sharper, angrier breath. Amelie is apparently content with her silence. Just holds her hand there, so perfectly still it’s as if she’s not even breathing. She might not be.

Even knowing something of her true nature, she’s magnetic. Her attention is intense, her touch surprisingly warm and soft. Fragile can understand, a little, what would make someone want to kill for this woman, or die for her, or rebuild fallen countries in her name.

But it’s all hollow, really. People projecting what they want onto a shape too vast for human eyes. The circuitous conversation is just a way of hiding the empty shell. So maybe this is all just a reflection. That loneliness, the desire for contact—that’s what Fragile is projecting. The realization makes her feel more than a little pathetic.

Still, she can’t pull away, can’t shake the feeling that to do so would be admitting some kind of defeat. So she glares up, steadied by the hand on her face. Looks death in her eyes and does not blink. 

Amelie is the one to break contact, lets her hand fall and turns away. “Thank you for your effort. But this will be over soon.”

“My body’s waking up?” She tries not to sound too eager about it. The nightmares always seem to get worse right before the end.

That smile, a final time. “Yes, that too. Are you ready to go back?”

It’s a pointless question, and for a moment Fragile doesn’t understand. Of course she’s ready, has wanted to jump away from the start. But then the angle changes abruptly again and she’s on her back, Amelie above her. Again, she does not remember being pushed there. A neatly sliced section of time has simply gone missing. There’s a strange sensation scratching on the inside of her skin, as if the sand has managed to get through her clothes.

Amelie is pushing her down into the sand, holding her there. Her body is—close. Closer than anyone has been in a very long time. Whatever physical response she might have to that is merely instinctive.

That red dress has ridden up at the side, reveals thighs as smooth as whalebone. The tide comes in fast. It licks up her body, soaks through her clothes easily. Fragile twists a little at the chill of the water, tries to gain some space.

Amelie doesn’t move. Barely reacts. If anything something in her face gets sharper, less human.

She tries to sit up, but Amelie is pinning her down with a weight far greater than her body. Her hands are bruising where they dig in. The water is already lapping up to her shoulders, strange and viscous. “Let go,” Fragile snarls, useless against the inevitable force. She’s surprised to find herself genuinely afraid, panic burning hot in her chest. She’s no repatriate. If she can die in this place, dream or not, then their last chance goes with her.

The strange black cords that crossed the shoreline before are now sliding up with the sea, tangling with their limbs. Fragile writhes with all her strength. It only serves to wear her out. “Let go,” Amelie echoes. The cords slip over her wrists and pull, dragging her down. When she opens her mouth to yell, the water rushes in.

And then they are not on the drowning shore but deep under the open ocean, sinking steadily in cold water. There’s barely any light here, just the faintest beams filtering in from above. At least, it seems like above. In water this deep it’s hard to tell any direction from another. The sea might as well be endless, for all it surrounds them.

Fragile thrashes, tries to struggle upwards, but it’s no use. The water is so cold it cuts right through her aching body, making it hard to move. Amelie’s mouth brushes against her cheek, her ear, saying something she can’t make out through the water. Those perfect hands push her deeper. The lightheaded feeling can only be from lack of oxygen.

She can’t tell the difference between the soft skin of Amelie’s legs and the slick slide of the cords that coil around her wrists and ankles. With no light and no air, there’s nothing she can do but cling to the thing holding her. But she still has the presence of mind to do so viciously, holds tight enough to bruise a human. It slips through her grasp, dissolves into a bloom of red in the water, and her hands close around nothing. With her goes the last of the light.

In a moment, she’ll wake up. For all her exhaustion, she’ll be renewed with purpose, even more convinced of the necessity of her help. But for that moment before consciousness, she hangs suspended in the water, the dark and the cold reaching into her, and thinks about what it means to be lonely.


End file.
